robert.admin – Page 36 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 28, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/27/2024

kay, to be blunt. Operations stank last night. Stank to high heaven. Literally. I was told that some unexpected guests came in and they reeked of cat piss. Members were literally coming in to complain and to steal some of my fresh air. I considered sealing the airlocks and going to internal air. I suppose that people who live near pulp mills and canneries “get used to it”. So what, you have a sand dune of unchanged cat litter in your house? Thanks Steve for prompt fumigation efforts. Every session, something new. Now that we cleared the air, what happened […]

March 25, 2024

OpsLog – Tusk Hill – 3/24/2024

Dear Mother, I’m happy to relate that my employment on some nameless Midlands railroad, specifically in the area of Tusk Hill Tower, is going swimmingly. I started as a controller, and my progression since then has been been astounding. Controller (as I said) to passenger train driver, to goods driver, to shunter. I’ve put in for a wiper job now that I’ve confirmed it has nothing to do with the WC. My career has been meteoric, specifically when one considered where impact craters come from. It was quite astounding to see how seven operators could run an eight-square-foot layout, moving […]

March 24, 2024

A Highly Unlikely Scenario (Review)

his is one of my puzzled reviews. Rachel Cantor’s A Highly Unlikely Scenario was an odd little read. You can figure this by the sub-title included: “A Nestsa Pixxs Employee’s Guide to saving the World”. So Leonard is the pizza employee, and he handles call center duties in a futuristic world where fast food corporations run everything. He’s feeling a little bad about his old Jewish grandfather, whom he kinda ridiculed and chided in the last years of his life. And then, suddenly, Leonard gets a call from someone who is in prison. The calls keeps coming in – even […]

March 22, 2024

On Sheet – A CTC Game

he whole thing about CTC (CentralizedTraffic Control) is pretty cool. It allows a dispatcher hundreds of miles away to set signals and turnouts, getting far more utility out of track than earlier methods. However, finding a layout that uses it is very difficult (in Florida, I know one full CTC layout and another that only sets turnouts (signals don’t do anything at this time)). So if you wish to experience it, either you find one of those layouts or you play a simulator. Which I”m including here: https://randallhook.com/railroad-dispatcher/play/ Now, keep in mind that this game was not quite completed – […]

March 21, 2024

A dated Quest (DOG EAR)

omeone loaned me the first (and really, only) season of Jonny Quest. It was fun to watch, and it involves the titular character (a young boy) whose father, one of those all-fields scientists of yore, takes him on all sorts of adventures. Included in their posse is body guard/builder Race Bannon and a young Hindu boy, Hadji, who the good doctor adapted after the plucky lad saved his life (hey, besides the thirty-two gallons of blood I’ve donated, I can think of two specific lives I’ve saved. Nobody’s adapted me). Oh, and Bandit, the dog who growls at scorpions that […]

March 19, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 3/18/2024

hat? Didn’t I just have a session the other night? Yes I did, with friends, as reported HERE. But I had an urge to run (I was managing the tower all last session) and I wanted to run my SW-7 in a little more – it’s so sweet now with a Paragon 4 chip. So I set up the layout and ran after the work session was complete. Hey, I was out there anyway. Rather than the blow-by-blow I usually do, let me mention a new “scenario” for operations on my Pennsy line. Now, boomers on my line no the […]

March 18, 2024

OpsLog – TBL – 03/17/2024

ight on the heels of working the Virginia SouthWestern (as detailed HERE) I boomered a job up north, taking the night train up to drop off the very next day in Tuscarora, my favorite stomping grounds. Apparently the tower has been down for maintenance issues over the last few months. Finally the interlocking has reopened (or so the head maintainer told me) – it’s run only one day so far under limited operations (with the mines closed, as detailed HERE). With Tuscarora down, all trains have been picking up orders elsewhere – the tower temporarily lost its train order station […]

March 18, 2024

OpsLog – VSW – 3/16/2024

once read a book – Goshawk Squadron – about a maniacal squadron commander in World War One who is drilling his men to be killers. Even in a lazy afternoon aerial drill, his pilots try to get close and pop a couple of shots his way, only to dive clear when he swings towards them. Nobody knows if he’ll shoot back or what. It’s like kittens fighting when the claws come out. Today’s session on the Virginia South Western was like that. No matter what went wrong and what delays we faced, everyone tried to pop a couple of shots […]

March 17, 2024

Armada (Review)

kay, a book by the guy who wrote Ready Player One, which was made into a movie that bore little resemblance to it. In this novel, we have another cast-off modern kid with absent daddy issues, Zach Lightman, who loves the late-sixties and seventies gaming world. Of course, while he is well-versed in older games, he is an Ace-of-the-Base in the modern game “Armada”. It’s a game that pits the main character (in a drone fighter) (which makes a lot more sense than wasting a perfectly good human) (kudos to author Ernest Cline for this point) against an enemy armada […]

March 15, 2024

On Sheet – Advice (Part 2)

n our last blog, I mentioned about getting advice from a kid in the middle of a brutal dispatching session. But sometimes advice can be useful. I was over at a great layout on the east coast of Florida. Nice line with CTC control and a lot of interesting switching. There is one job that runs down from the yard and works a very tight industrial area. One industry, a truss factory, sits across the main. Everything is is forward, and it’s all facing point, so it’s got that going for it. I’d just gotten down the hill when one […]